does anybody treat their shoes before the first wear (ie. polish or condition)? also why do they not sell the cleaner/conditioner anymore?

I don't do it before I wear them, but I generally do it about 3 weeks after I've been wearing them. I was over-conditioning when I first bought my early shoes. Now I'm much more relaxed about it. As others on here have stated many times, it never hurts to lightly brush your shoes with horse hair every day to clean off any dirt and dust. Conditioning and polish in kind of a subjective thing, so I don't think there's a right answer, but never doing is obviously bad.

I'm also curious as to why the conditioner / cleaner disappeared. I fortunately have multiple bottles of it, but I hope this is just a temporary problem. I will talking to an AE customer service person soon and I'll see if I can find out what happened.

How are your new walnut Strands working out? If the Bartlett's go down to 300 in the 2nds sale, I might consider them.

I don't do it before I wear them, but I generally do it about 3 weeks after I've been wearing them. I was over-conditioning when I first bought my early shoes. Now I'm much more relaxed about it. As others on here have stated many times, it never hurts to lightly brush your shoes with horse hair every day to clean off any dirt and dust. Conditioning and polish in kind of a subjective thing, so I don't think there's a right answer, but never doing is obviously bad.

I'm also curious as to why the conditioner / cleaner disappeared. I fortunately have multiple bottles of it, but I hope this is just a temporary problem. I will talking to an AE customer service person soon and I'll see if I can find out what happened.

How are your new walnut Strands working out? If the Bartlett's go down to 300 in the 2nds sale, I might consider them.

They fit awesome just like the mcallisters. European bar lacing helps quite a bit, I should've tried it on the first pair of 7.5 D so I wouldn't have to go through all this trouble. I guess I finally found my size for the 65 last. Weird how I brannock 8-8.25 and borderline D/E and I could fit a 7.5 D.

Damn was really hoping the park aves would go below 300 for the RDA sale, I want to pick up a pair of black ones.

Yes, I bought a pair of Cordovan McNeils on that sale. They came all damaged with a box that had scotch tape wrapped over it. Not impressed with Club Monaco.

You can tell from the box label, that pair has been around Club Monaco for a long time. AE hasn't use that label for a few years.

In any case, I would keep. You should be able to get those scuffs off easily. I bought a pair of vintage Aldens that had multiple scuffs on the side like someone missed a brick or concrete step. Multiple applications of Lexol and about 4 hours of brushing later, and no one would know anything had happened to them. Yours will be much easier, but shell REALLY likes to be brushed.

They also looked like they had been worn 3 or 4 times and then tossed in the back of a car parked in the middle of the dessert for a decade. So liberal Lexol was used, but now they shine better than my brand new shell Park Aves.

Because so many of their colors these days are burnished. And not just colors that are "created" by burnishing like Bourbon. Even staples like Walnut and Dark Brown are now burnished. Burnished means that the color of the shoe is modified by applying a different color shoe polish by a burnishing wheel. And if there's one thing the AE conditioner/cleaner did very well, it's stripping off old shoe polish. I'm guessing they got tired of people returning shoes that were "ruined" by using it and so just dropped the product.

I had wanted to get some custom neumoks in my school colors, but purple was not available.
In the meantime, I found an old pair of light grey nubuck ankle boots (non-AE) that appeared to be unworn. After some purple dye, I was set and wore them to a football game. I got a LOT of positive comments.
So I decided to see if AE has added purple as an option to the custom Nuemok. But the custom Nuemok is no more. It's gone! I was really hoping for a purple and black, or purple and gray Nuemok.

I'm going to pick up my first pair of penny loafers during the RDA....which color would you suggest...oxblood or brown?

Oxblood for sure.

But one thing - I'd definitely try these out in the store if you can first. I'm assuming you're talking about the Cavanaugh - they are very much a "binary" type of fit. They will either work perfectly or they will be really bad - rather than try to fight different lengths and widths I'd pass at that point - plenty of other options. If they work for you, great.